Modi appeal clouded in India elections by prices, jobs, graft, survey says

NEW DELHI:

A lack of jobs, high inflation and falling incomes in India led voters to rein in support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a general election where his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to win a majority, a survey found.

However, Modi’s leadership was a strong pull to give his alliance another term, he said. He was named leader on Wednesday of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which won a majority of seats, the first time his Hindu nationalist BJP has had to rely on regional parties for support to form a government.

The NDA won 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, more than the simple majority of 272 seats required to form a government. BJP won only 240.

INDIA’s alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s centrist Congress party won more than 230 seats, more than predicted.

Modi is scheduled to meet President Draupadi Murmu on Friday to stake his claim to form the government, an NDA leader said on condition of anonymity.

At least 30 percent of voters said they were worried about inflation, a jump from 20 percent before the election, according to a Lokniti-CSDS survey, The Hindu newspaper reported. The agency spoke to nearly 20,000 voters in 23 of India’s 28 states during the poll, it said.

The Hindu said that in an earlier survey conducted before the elections, unemployment was the main concern of 32% of respondents.

“However, during the election campaign, possibly due to promises of employment that resonated with voters, this figure dropped to 27% in the post-poll survey,” the newspaper said.

Declining income and how the government is dealing with corruption and fraud were other issues of concern to voters, according to the survey.

A total of 21% of respondents said they chose the BJP for its efforts to develop the country, while 20% did so for Modi’s leadership, double the 10% polled before the poll.

The construction of a major Hindu temple in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state in January, repeatedly cited by Modi and the BJP as a landmark event, was the government’s favorite project, according to the survey.

Despite this, the party could not win the Faizabad seat where Ayodhya is located. It also underperformed elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state that sends 80 MPs to parliament. The BJP’s seat share there fell to 33 from 62 in the last election.